Fred Hassan of Bausch & Lomb, on Managers as Ambassadors

This interview with Fred Hassan, chairman of Bausch & Lomb and a managing director at Warburg Pincus, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q.What were some early leadership lessons for you?

A. My parents sent me off to learn engineering in Britain. One company I worked for had a tiered system. I would get my paycheck out of one window, and the guys who were in lower middle management would get their paycheck at another window. We would sit in separate cafeterias. I never forgot that, and wherever I’ve been in a position to make changes, the first thing I’ve always done is to get rid of any barriers that separate people.

Q.Other early lessons?

A. A very important thing I learned from my parents was to get your hands dirty. Just go in there and do a good job, always focus on the next mile, and things are usually going to break your way.

Q.What did your parents do for a living?

A. My dad was a civil servant. He was proud of what he did, and he worked very hard. Seeing people around him do well was the big thing he was proud of, and that’s something that’s very deep in my DNA. My mother was a politician for a while. She also sponsored an organization for women’s rights. She was a person who didn’t want to play a traditional role, and yet she did it in a very careful, calm and peaceful manner.

Q. Early on, you rose up quickly through the ranks at Sandoz. How did you do that?

A. I had the reputation of being somebody you could ask to show up and do something different with a difficult situation. I would get it done, and then I would get the next job. I was head of Sandoz Pakistan, and they were so shocked at the dramatic turnaround there that they put me in charge of Sandoz U.S., which was in bad shape.

Q. So what was your playbook?

A. Roll up your sleeves, build credibility, and be very authentic with everybody so people start to believe you and trust you, and then get them to move together in the same direction. Then, when the green shoots occur, celebrate those wins, because people want to be on a winning team. That gets the flywheel turning. You have to gain a mandate for change. You can’t just say, “I’m the new change agent.”

You have to behave in a very consistent manner. If you appoint people two and three levels down who are credible, the organization starts to say, hey, maybe this change effort is for real. The other group I try to get to very quickly are the front-line managers, because if they start to see themselves as ambassadors as opposed to shop stewards, it totally changes the productivity of the whole organization.

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Fred Hassan is chairman of Bausch & Lomb and a managing director at Warburg Pincus. He says that by making front-line managers feel like ambassadors, not shop stewards, “it totally changes the productivity of the whole organization.”CreditEarl Wilson/The New York Times

Q.What steps do you take with the people two and three levels down?

A. When I went to Schering-Plough, I talked to them as a group, and I asked everyone to identify their main issues, their main problems, and we went around the room. Then I went around the room again and I said, “Now tell me how you’re going to solve it, and how everybody else can help you.” By asking them in that manner, I wanted them to take ownership and accountability.

Initially, there’s a tendency to just focus on the problems and almost act a little helpless. But by asking them to talk about the solutions, and encouraging them to speak in front of their peers, that creates a certain positive tension. It forces people to say, “What am I going to do to make a contribution to the effort here?”

Q. Are there things you have a particularly low tolerance for in these turnaround situations?

A. If I go into a change situation as C.E.O., there are the boosters who are with you, and there are the naysayers who you have to either convince or move out. But then you’ve got these passive-aggressives who are very difficult to deal with, and you’ve got the fence-sitters who mean well but are not totally convinced about the new program.

The passive-aggressives are the ones who on the surface appear to be nodding their heads, but they’re actually not with you, and they undermine culture change in a big way. They make it so much harder. You’ve got to get these passive-aggressives out of the system as early as possible. They hold you back.

Q. What are some of their behaviors?

A. They’ll nod their head in a meeting, and then say something else to 100 people. They know who the other passive-aggressives are, and they signal to each other just with their body language, tone and demeanor. It is very toxic, and I see it in the body language first. Their arms are folded, or a smile comes out at the wrong moment. And when I see it, and I’ve learned to spot it over the years, I do not let them get away with it for too long. It just doesn’t work.

Q. Six executives who’ve worked with you have gone on to become C.E.O.’s on their own. How did you mentor them?

A. Every one of them has a different story, but two things were always in common: No. 1 was expanding their role at the right time so that they got to stretch themselves. No. 2, I did a lot of reverse mentoring. So I listened to what they had to tell me, and that helped me be a better mentor. I don’t think mentors are at their best if it’s only one way. Mentoring is also most effective when the person who’s being mentored really wants to soak it up. I don’t think it’s an easy “push” system. It’s a much better “pull” system.

Q.How do you hire?

A. To some extent, it depends on the level you’re hiring at, and the development stage of the company. Let’s say it’s a turnaround situation and I’m a board member, and I’m hiring a C.E.O. I look for a few things, and the kinds of questions I ask are: Why do you want this job? Why do you believe you’re good for this job? Why do you believe you can win? What would early wins look like, and when can we expect them? And what would you do in the first 200 days, and in the next 200 days? Based on the answers, I would see a lot. Then I might go into the “whys” — they tell you a lot about a person.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section BU, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Helping Managers See Themselves As Ambassadors. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe